Dr. Parke's “The American Experience,” an interpretation of the history and civilization of the United States as shown by the people themselves in their writings, manners and customs, was published by Knopf in 1947. It has been widely used in college and university courses.
In it he reached the thesis that the real essence of America is the agrarian democracy, with its qualities of self‐reliance, optimism, utilitarianism and liberalism.
Dr. Parkes was born in Sheffield, England, on Nov. 12, 1904, graduated from Oxford in 1927 and then did graduate work on fellowships at the University of Michigan, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1929. Impressed by a sense of “limitless opportunity, of a civilization still in the making"’ in the United States, he decided to make America his permanent home. In 1930, Dr. Parkes joined the New York University faculty.
- from https://www.nytimes.com/1972/01/08/archives/dr-henry-b-parkes-dies-at-67-historian-led-nyu-division.html
